Its Rattle Is Worse Than Its Bite Florida's Second Most Odious Reptile Basically Wants To Live In Peace. But When You Hunt One, You May Be The Prey.

July 6, 1986|By Douglas Dillon

ASIDE FROM THE ALLIGATOR, the top contender for most-dreaded repitle status in Florida is undoubtedly the rattlesnake. Few Floridians haven't at least flirted with the fear that some day they'll get fanged, rendered ready for the mortuary in a matter of heartbeats.

The facts, of course, don't really support such fears. But just about everyone who's lived here a while has his own first-person snake story. Mine came in the late summer of 1960. A friend, walking next to me late at night, was about to step over what he thought was a large branch stretched across a moonlit dirt road in Maitland. He didn't appreciate the backward shove I gave him until my prodding the 6-foot ''branch'' with a long stick caused it to coil, rattle for an instant and then strike the air in front of us with blinding speed. Later, after we'd killed that snake, the decapitated body coiled and struck my hand, leaving me with the sickening sensation that I'd been bitten.

A native Floridian to be recognized and respected, the Eastern diamondback rattle snake is recognized by snake aficionados as the largest, most dangerous serpent in North America. Rivaled in size only by the deadly bushmaster of South America and the king cobra of Asia, the diamondback's maximum official length hovers around the 8-foot mark.

The disinctive, yellow diamond pattern against a black or dark olive- green background almost can be lost in the mottled sunlight filtering through the foliage of a diamondbacks' palmetto-scrub or pine-forest habitat. Many a rabbit, squirrel and hunting dog hasn't seen the tightly knit coils until it was too late.

Although endowed with excellent eyesight, the diamondback also has an infared sensing pit beneath each eye that enables the snake to ''see'' body heat from an animal even in the dark. Like other such snakes known as pit vipers, diamondbacks can follow their prey in the dark, simply by relying on the complex nerve bundles in each pit.

The danger from a diamondback bite comes from the snake's large size and ability to inject huge amounts of venom into its victim.

As if camoflage, size and amount of venom weren't enough protection, the diamondback has also been blessed with a rapid-fire striking mechanism, and the ability strike a distance of two thirds its body length. Mike Fournoy, curator of reptiles at the Silver Springs Reptile Institute, says that studies have shown diamondbacks striking at a speed of about 7 feet per second. What this usually means is that a victim is bitten in less than 1 1/2 seconds after the snake begins its lunge.

IN THE MIDST OF Florida's explosive growth, and even because of it, encounters with diamondbacks are not uncommon. Craig Warren, a reptile handler at Gatorland near Kissimmee tells of periodic calls to come get a rattler from newly built housing areas.

George Van Horn of Reptile World Serpentarium in St. Cloud, explains it this way. ''As people invade more diamondback country, they are obviously going to run into more diamondbacks. All these areas that are being developed are just confusing the snakes. For instance, a male rattler looking for a mate will go to an area where he found one last year, and in stead he finds a gas station and a hotel. That's when we get a call.''

In the age-old saga of man versus serpent, snake

bite statistics for the United States show that about 7,000 people are bitten by poisonous snakes annually. Of that number, 12 to 15 people actually die. In Florida, that translates to about 200-300 snakebites per year with only one or two fatalities. Diamondback bites, though, are not recorded as often as those of the pigmy rattler and the cottonmouth moccasin.

One reason for the low mortality rate of snakebite incidents, according to the experts, is that in only about 20 percent of the cases has there been enough venom injected for the bite to become life threatening. In about another 20 percent of the cases, no venom was injected at all. Apparently, a poisonous snake has control over whether or not it excretes its venom, and how much.

''Venom is primarily meant to immobilize a food source more than it is meant to protect a snake from surprise attack,'' says Van Horn.

Another factor in the lower death rates in recent years is the wide spread use of antivenin. Made from the blood serum of a horse injected with increasing dosages of a particular venom, antivenin's active ingredients are actually antibodies that the horse's system has built up to resist the poison. Injected into humans who have been bitten, it fights venom, with generally good results if administered, in cases of a severe bite, within four hours of the incident.